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The Ballad of Big Al
The Ballad of Big Al (distributed as Allosaurus: A Walking with Dinosaurs Special in the North American market) is a two episode special to Walking with Dinosaurs following the life and death of Big Al, the most complete Allosaurus skeleton ever discovered. It originally aired in Christmas 2000 in the United Kingdom before airing in North America on the Discovery Channel on April 8, 2001. Plot The special begins at the University of Wyoming, where the camera focuses on dinosaur skeletons before landing on an Allosaurus skeleton named Big Al. Al's ghost passes by his own skeleton and a nest of fossilized eggs, before transitioning 145 million years to the Late Jurassic. At the end of the dry season, a nest of eggs revealed to be Al and his siblings hatch with help from their mother, who leads them to a riverbank where they begin to hunt for insects. When the mother temporarily leaves the hatchlings behind to hunt for herself, the brood are attacked by a year-old Allosaurus, who kills and makes off with one of the hatchlings. Luckily, Al was not the victim. Two years later, Al begins to hunt on his own. He wanders into a scrub forest, where he attempts to hunt a flock of Dryosaurus, but the smaller dinosaurs are too swift and easily escape. Luckily, he manages to snatch and eat a lizard to satisfy his hunger. Al then comes across a dead Stegosaurus and an Allosaurus waiting for death in a pit of sticky mud. A large female Allosaurus approaches, having been attracted to the smell of the Stegosaurus carcass, but becomes trapped herself. Al luckily avoids the same fate as he has learned to avoid carrion and the large carnivores that it usually attracts. Unable to escape, the trapped Allosaurus pair die of exhaustion, and their corpses are left to be eaten by a flock of Anurognathus. Three more years pass, and Al, now 30 feet (9 meters) long, joins several other Allosaurus in stalking a herd of Diplodocus migrating across a salt lake. The predators successfully manage to break up the herd and isolate a weakened sick individual. But as the Allosaurus gather to feast, Al is easily knocked down by the Diplodocus, so the pack decides to wait for a few hours until, finally, the Diplodocus dies of heat exhaustion and his illness. As they begin to feed, an adult female Allosaurus arrives on the scene to scavenge the kill. Al takes some remnants of the carcass for himself and leaves to find a safer place to eat. A year later, Al, now 33 feet (10 meters) long, begins to show signs of sexual maturity as the crests on his head are beginning to redden. He arrives to drink at a pond, but the other animals are made nervous by his presence, and the smell of blood he brings with him puts off a pair of Stegosaurus who were trying to mate. Away from the pond, Al discovers dung left by a female Allosaurus and issues a mating call. The female, who is much larger than Al, is not interested, but Al's inexperience shows, and she attacks him. Al escapes with smashes ribs and an injury to his right arm. As the dry season arrives, Al attempts to hunt a flock of Dryosaurus. While attempting to ambush them, however, he trips over a log and breaks the middle toe in his right foot. As the dry season turns to a drought, Al's limp grows worse as his broken toe becomes badly infected. Unable to hunt, he dies in a dried-up riverbed, where two hatchling Allosaurus are hunting for bugs and come across his emaciated carcass. He is said to have died as a mature adolescent who never reached his full size, and that the process of his fossilization was so perfect it preserved even the injuries and diseases he sustained in his life, including - amongst others - lumps where his ribs healed after their break and the raging infection on his middle toe. Episodes Category:Dinosaurs Category:Nature documentaries Category:BBC Category:Walking with...